“He came in and he handled it well”, Edelman told Phil Perry of CSN New England. He gave up two plays and he knows he doesn’t want to give them up, we know we don’t want him to give them up. “He”s got the size, he”s got the arm, but in some of those games that I watched, there”s something missing that bothered me a bit.”.
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“Good poise, good decision-making under pressure, and when I say pressure, having people around him,” Belichick said on Monday at his news conference, according to the team”s website.
Jacoby Brissett sure didn’t look like a first-timer Sunday afternoon. But it also left with yet another quarterback issue to resolve after Jimmy Garoppolo had a Tom Brady-light performance halted by a right shoulder injury.
But the third-year quarterback was knocked out in the second quarter with a shoulder injury later reported to be a sprained AC joint.
Garoppolo, a second-round pick in 2014 out of Eastern Illinois, has been Brady’s understudy for the past two years. “He thinks these things through, and obviously the game just happened [Sunday], so a lot of things could happen between now and Thursday night, but Julian has kind of been in that role”, he said. “You can’t go out there and start slow and then kick it on later on”.
The Pats did win over the Dolphins, 31-24, but the most pressing matter is the injury that Jimmy Garoppolo sustained. LeGarrette Blount adding another 9-yard rushing touchdown to the scoreboard early in the third quarter. Unfortunately, Garoppolo wasn’t on the field to enjoy the victory-or for the entire second half of the game. It was the second week in a row he eclipsed 100 passing yards in the first quarter of a game.
To start off the game, Big Papi (if you live under a rock, Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz/Greatest Clutch Hitter of All Time) continued his Farewell Tour at Gillette Stadium where he was made honorary Captain, got in on the coin toss and schmoozed with Bob Kraft.
The Brady-or-Belichick debate can never be truly settled, but two facts stand out as the Patriots sit at 2-0 and poised to hand the offense to a third-string rookie.
Garoppolo is 42-of-60 for 498 yards, four touchdowns, and no interceptions in his two games this season, proving that it isn’t overly hard for a quarterback to succeed in Belichick’s system.
“Just make the plays that are there”, Tannehill said. “I mean, they know us, we know them, and that’s how these games always, for some reason, turn out”. Brissett made his debut when Garoppolo left Sunday’s contest, and he’ll be under the spotlight if he starts for the first time in New England’s nationally televised game.
“Look, he’s been working on this for a long time, all the way back into the spring, all the way through training camp”, Belichick said of Brissett after the win against the Dolphins on Sunday.
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However, things are starting to get dicey in general. Three days to prepare for their Thursday Night Football clash with the Houston Texans in a big early-season AFC battle further complicates things for the Patriots, making it very hard to create a new gameplan with such a short turnaround.
